Background: The volcano used to be called Mt. Misery and since the end of the sugar cane industry and the rise of the tourist industry the name changed to Mt. Liamuiga (Fertile Land). From what I was told by this seventh semester student is that the water for the island comes from dams around the edge of the crater that supply water to the locals...ME! Since there are not a lot of wild life, especially on the volcano, the dammed water stays fairly clean from contaminants. We even crossed some of the pipes that carry the water down the volcano. St. Kitts is unique in that it can supply its own water, though I bet some of the water gets desalinated from the ocean too to meet the demand from visitors. Mt. Liamuiga hasn't erupted in over 2000 years and we hope not to jinx her. There is an island near by that has a volcano which hadn't erupted in over 2000 years and I believe just recently(the past year or so) it has erupted and leaves plumes of ash and smoke over the island. Let's all pray that Mt. Liamuiga doesn't erupt for the next three years at the least, it would make for an AWESOME story! The volcano is on the opposite side of the island in relation to where I live, no worries, I have some time to get out of here before the air quality and such get really bad!
If you care to know more about the geological data of St. Kitts here is a link, but I warn you unless you are Sara Greene it is dense.
http://www.caribbeanvolcanoes.com/stkitts/geology.htm
Here are some pictures of the hike:
Slowly driving threw a goat herd...this is the first time I have seen goats with a herdsman!
Approaching our destination, as you can see the roads are graded dirt! We even crossed railroad tracks. Though I don't believe there is an active commercial or public train. I believe the "Sugar Train" is run as a tourist sight seeing train only. We saw one on our way to the volcano, the train cars have been modified into Double Decker train cars. Yeah, it is pretty funny.
This is where the trail head begins, a bit past this sign and up ahead they are building a driving range.
When we approached the guy was trying to point the donkey up hill but as stubborn as he was he kept turning around and going back down the hill. Eventually the human won and if you look close he has a machete in his hands and the reins in the other. There are a good portion of the agrarian locals don't like dogs and carry the machetes
We had an impressive caravan to the trail head, and you can see how beautiful of a day it was for a hike!
The view from the parking area
Welcome to the Jungle...that had no fauna just a crap load of flora
As you will notice the trail is narrow and littered with roots and such, oh yeah more flora
Here are the root steps that were a theme on the hike
There were points where I had to climb on hands an knees to get up the root steps, and as you can see we traveled through what would be a creek or water flow or lava flow...whatever. There was no seeing over the walls of foliage and rock. These areas were particularly humid.
I am doing all right!
More walls of dirt, roots, flora, and rock. We climbed out of the crack up head in this photo if you can see.
Strangler vine everywhere
The path I have traveled
I forgot to mention the many logs that we climbed over. One had a medium drop on the other side that required some spotting before taking the leap.
Palms, for shade.
Laura, the same one that took us on the Bat Cave hike, was showing us the special characteristics of this trees sap. The sap is white and like thread, if you get enough fresh sap wrapped around a stick you can ignite it. It actually acts like a sparkler. It was a cool factoid, with a caution. See, most white sap trees you shouldn't touch because the sap is caustic (burns), but this trees sap isn't caustic but ignites. Yeah, I am not going to remember this and get burned one of these days trying to show someone else.
Trail, trail, where is the trail? I frequently looked behind me so that I could get an idea of what this hike was going to be like going down, and I often was worried about keeping on the trail on the way down. That's why you travel in groups though, right?!
Yeah, you tell me where the trail is.
Don't be fooled this is not some mangrove tree, it is a tree that has been taken over and most likely strangled by......you guessed it! Strangler vine. At some point the vines have built around enough of the tree to keep it from the sun light and eventually the tree dies. The cool part is that when the tree decomposes the vine keeps the tree's shape but has spaces through the different vines. It makes for great photos.
The crater view!
Mt. Liamuiga crater rim. A little metal rod placed in the rock, I guess it is to pitch a flag or something.
Yes, proof I made it to the crater of Mt. Liamuiga
Other half of the crater. There wasn't a lot of room to get very good photos because of all the rock and flora that abounded at the top. There was a rock climb part that would give you a glimpse of the ponds inside the volcano, but it was windy and I was tired. I will get those pictures another time. I was actually getting cold at the top, which was nice until my muscles cooled.
This is Devils Tooth or Saw tooth I can't quite remember now, but this is the rock out crop.
A better picture of the Devils tooth...I am pretty sure now that the name is Devil's tooth.
The climb down was nothing but tiring after climbing to the top and resting. It was beautiful and worth a another trip to get a better picture of the inside of the volcano. See all the wonderful things there are to see on the island. Don't you want to come visit and go hiking with me!
A cool picture of where the Caribbean and Atlantic oceans meet. You see the Atlantic white water on the left and the Caribbean white water(longer line of white water) on the right.
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